“It is not much flock’d to by People of Quality,” he goes on to observe. Here, at least, he is not out of date. People of Quality do not flock to Islington. The medicinal waters are all gone; and that Islington is, even now, not in any great degree a resort of fashion is an incontrovertible fact.
Between this and Highgate, the road leading to what the poets call the “true and tender North” is by no means happy. Any other of the classic highways of England begins better, and however delightful the Holloway Road may have been in the coaching age, it is in these crowded days a very commonplace thoroughfare indeed. The long reaches of mean streets and sordid bye-roads combine with the unutterably bad road surface to render the exit from London anything but pleasurable.
Sir Walter Scott, on his way down to Abbotsford in 1826, calls the Great North Road “the dullest road in the world, though the most convenient,” and the description, minus the convenience, might well stand for its suburban portion to-day. In Sir Walter’s time, however, these first few miles were only just emerging from a condition in which dulness could have had no part. In fact, it may well be supposed that the travellers, who up to that time went by coach to York, well armed, found the journey a thought too lively. Indeed, the Holloway Road, into which they came, from the last outposts of civilisation, was, as it were the ante-chamber into that direful territory of highwaymen and footpads, the veritable Alsatias of Finchley Common and Whetstone. In fact, a few years earlier still, when there were no houses at Holloway at all, and no district known by that name, what is now called the Holloway Road was a lonely track, full of mud and water, through which the coach route ran, infested all the while by the most villainous characters, compared with whom the gay highwayman in ruffles and lace, and mounted on a mettlesome horse, was a knight indeed—a chevalier without fear or reproach. This stretch of road lay then between high banks, and considerably below the level of the surrounding fields. It was a “hollow” road, as such roads are called wherever they exist in the country—the actual, original Hollow Way from which, in the course of time, a whole residential district has obtained its name. Such roads, worn down through the earth by constant traffic, are always very ancient, and though the story of the Holloway Road at a period from a hundred and fifty to eighty years ago was a disgraceful one, the inhabitants of that part can console themselves by the soothing thought that, although it cannot claim the Roman ancestry of the route by Shoreditch, Waltham Cross and Cheshunt, which was the Ermine Way, the road in question probably dates back to the respectable antiquity of mediæval times.
VIII
The road has been ascending ever since the General Post Office was left behind, and now we come to the beginning of Highgate Hill, where the old way over the hill-top, and the more recent one, dating from 1813, divide left and right. Here, at the junction of Salisbury Road with Highgate Hill, stands the Whittington Stone, marking the traditional spot where Dick rested on his flight, and heard the bells inviting him to
“Turn again, Whittington,
Thrice Lord Mayor of London.”
It is a pretty story, and one which, let us hope, will never be forgotten or popularly discredited; how the boy, running away from ill-treatment at his master’s house in the city, halted here in his four-miles’ flight, and resting on the slope of Highgate Hill, saw the clustered spires of London and the silvery Thames—it was silvery then—down below, and heard the prophetic message of Bow Bells inviting him to return. If we can believe that he had his favourite cat with him, let us believe with joy, because it goes far to complete the tender story which has always held captive the hearts of the children; and God forbid we should grow the less tender towards the beautiful legends of our forbears as we grow older.
Bow Bells fulfilled their prophecy in full measure and running over, for Dick Whittington was chosen to complete the year of Mayor—Adam Bamme—who died in 1397, and was Mayor on three separate occasions as well; in 1397, 1406, and 1420. He was knighted, of course, and, moreover, he became one of the richest men of his time. Perhaps the most dramatic thing recorded of his prosperous career as Mayor and a member of the Mercers’ Company, is that splendid entertainment which he gave to Henry the Fifth and his Queen at Guildhall in his last year of office, when he threw into the fire bonds equal to £60,000 of our money, due to him from the king—a generous, nay, a princely gift.
But he was not “Lord” Mayor. The tradition is wrong in that respect. There were “Mayors,” but no “Lord Mayor” until 1486.
Who was Richard Whittington? We know him well in his later career as a Mercer, and as a pious and patriotic citizen; but whence came he? Was he the poor and friendless lad of legend? Well, not quite that. Poor, perhaps, because he was the youngest of three brothers; but not friendless, for his family was of no mean descent. His father, Sir William Whittington, had an estate on which he lived, at Pauntley, in Gloucestershire, and other possessions of the family were at Sollers Hope, Herefordshire. Misfortunes fell upon Sir William, who seems to have died not long after Dick was born; but the family had friends in the FitzWarrens, of whom one, Sir John, was a prominent Mercer in London. Dick’s brothers had, as elder brothers have nowadays, the best chances, as it seemed, and remained in the country, enjoying the family property, or following rural employments. Dick we may readily picture as being sent to FitzWarren, to learn a trade. The great man probably took him for old acquaintance’ sake, and, having received the lad of thirteen, and turned him over to one of his many underlings, promptly forgot him. It is a way with the great, not yet obsolete. We may with a good conscience reject that part of the legend which tells how Dick was found, an obscure waif and stray, on FitzWarren’s doorstep, and taken, in compassion, to serve as a scullion. The pantomimes always insist on this, and on the ferocious cook’s ill-treatment of him; but pantomime librettists have many sins to answer for.